“The River” is a story about Christian baptism. The protagonist, a little boy named Harry, finds himself baptized while in the care of his babysitter. The rest of the story plays out the consequences of this baptism, with all of O’Connor’s typical thematic interplay of violence and grace.
“He Ain’t Fixed Right”
O’Connor signals her theme from the very beginning of this story. Mrs. Connin tells Harry’s father that the boy “ain’t fixed right,” to which the father responds, “Well then for Christ’s sake fix him” (157). They are talking about the boy’s jacket, but as we read we realize O’Connor’s double meaning: Harry isn’t “fixed right” because he isn’t baptized. He doesn’t “count” yet, to use the phrase of the river preacher.
But there are many other things wrong with Harry. His parents have shipped him off with the babysitter for the day while they nurse their hangovers from the night before. Harry’s father says goodbye to his son from the doorway of the bedroom, calling him “old man”–no hug, no kiss, no touch at all. Harry’s mother says nothing to him; her hangover is too debilitating.
As we read through the story, we learn that Harry’s life consists of “jokes” that usually lead to disappointments, fear, and pain. He immediately suspects cruelty from Mrs. Connin’s freckled kids, which they indeed deliver–their “joke” leaves Harry screaming for a full five minutes. At the end of the story, when Harry struggles in the river to find the Kingdom of Christ, he despairs and exclaims to himself, “it’s another joke, it’s just another joke!” (173).
The pathetic description of Harry’s typical morning life further shows how Harry “ain’t right.” His parents are busy sleeping off yet another hangover; Harry knows they won’t wake until after noon, so he occupies himself with scrounging in the fridge and dumping ashtrays out onto the carpet.
From his parents and their friends, Harry has learned to defend himself through compulsive lying, suspicion, and stealing. There is no doubt that Harry (aka Bevel) is a sinner and guilty of many things. However, O’Connor gives us reasons why Harry does this things. He lies about his name so that Mrs. Connin will think more highly of him–which she does immediately. When she hears that Harry’s name is “Bevel,” the same as her beloved river-preacher, she snaps out of her drowsing and looks “down at him as if he had become a marvel to her” (159).
Bevel (from this point on O’Connor uses the boy’s alias) steals Mrs. Connin’s handkerchief and her picture book of Jesus for the simple reason that he wanted to keep them. The care she showed Bevel by loaning her handkerchief was foreign to Bevel, so he kept the handkerchief as a memento. He steals the Jesus book for the same reason, but also because it taught him that “he had been made by a carpenter named Jesus Christ” and not by the fat doctor Sladewell (163).
As they walk toward the river, Bevel’s jacket hangs a little to one side because of his pilfered goods. But the boy, for the first and only time in the entire story, is happy. He “began to make wild leaps and pull forward on her hand as if he wanted to dash off and snatch the sun which was rolling away ahead of them now” (163-64).
“You Count Now”
The river preacher’s message uses the metaphor of the actual river he’s standing in to explain the “River of Life, made out of Jesus’ Blood” (165). In this river, Bevel is baptized, much to his surprise. O’Connor’s Catholicism saw baptism as a sacrament that communicated grace to the recipient. The preacher “said the words of Baptism” (168), (that is, invoked the Trinitarian name) and dunked Bevel in the river. O’Connor would fully agree with the preacher that after his baptism, Bevel now counts–God now sees him as His child. In fact, Bevel is now no longer Harry–even the lie of the morning is transformed, and the boy has been rechristened. His new name signifies his new being.
O’Connor continues to express this new state of being when Bevel returns home that night. His mother comes into his bedroom to question him about what he told the preacher (note that she comes for a selfish reason–not to kiss him goodnight). Bevel hears her voice “a long way away, as if he were under the river and she on top of it” (170). When she pulls him into a sitting position, “he felt as if he had been drawn up from under the river” (171). By continuing this metaphor of the river, O’Connor expresses the significant difference that now existed between Bevel and his mother. Bevel is baptized, and his mother isn’t; Bevel “counts” to God, his mother doesn’t. Bevel is “under the River,” but his mother isn’t. Bevel himself reiterates this difference when he repeats the words of the preacher to his mother: ”He said I’m not the same now. I count” (171).
Pigs and Paradise
No discussion of this story is complete without taking account of Mr. Paradise, the other character who suddenly finds himself the recipient of Grace. Mr. Paradise runs the gas station and suffers from a large tumor on his left temple. He once tried to be healed by a river preacher, but when that failed, he became a fierce skeptic. Mrs. Connin says that he attends all the river meetings to scoff at the faithful: ”He always comes to show he ain’t been healed” (162).
Yet Mr. Paradise is haunted by the very River he scoffs at. At the end of the story, O’Connor tells us that Mr. Paradise had a habit of sitting by the river every day “holding an unbaited fishline in the water while he stared at the river passing in front of him” (173). He goes to this very spot when he tails Bevel to the river (this is important, as we’ll see in the next section). Though a scoffer and apparent atheist, Mr. Paradise is Christ-haunted. Like Bevel, Mr. Paradise deeply desires to go under the River to the Kingdom of Christ–but the tumor on his temple blocks his way.
The pigs that appear in this story are connected to Mr. Paradise. The sow that terrifies Bevel is fond of Mr. Paradise, Mrs. Connin explains (162). And the reason that Bevel dunks himself under the water for fatal last time is because he heard a shout and saw “something like a giant pig bounding after him” (174): a giant pig-shaped Mr. Paradise in a futile attempt to save the drowning boy.
Why the connection between pigs and Mr. Paradise? O’Connor gives us the answer when Bevel reads the Jesus book. The book illustrates the story of Jesus casting the legion of demons out of the possessed man and sending them into a herd of pigs, which rushes into the water and is drowned. However, the book gets the details wrong and portrays Jesus “driving a crowd of pigs out of the man” (163). This error, combined with Bevel’s recent encounter with a real pig, cause the boy to connect pigs with several things–disease, sin, pain, fear–with whatever it is that men need to be healed from. In Bevel’s naive mind, pigs are what’s wrong with the world–with Mr. Paradise, with his parents, with everyone at the river meeting. At the river, when Bevel sees Mr. Paradise, he hides in Mrs. Connin’s skirt because he sees the man as a manifestation of “the problem of pigs.”
Suffering and Salvation
The story ends tragically and ironically: Bevel drowns in the river, vainly searching for the Kingdom of Christ under the water. Mr. Paradise, who follows the boy to the river, fails to save the little boy from drowning. On the surface of the story, the main theme is one of futility and misunderstanding–the river preacher’s message and baptism lead to death and suffering.
However, O’Connor is a Catholic. Bevel’s baptism does indeed mean that he counts, and because he drowns while sincerely searching for Christ Himself–he finds exactly what he is looking for. Bevel’s earnest search comes from his childlike faith, which means he enters the Kingdom of Christ after his death. Though his death is a tragedy of misunderstanding and circumstances, Bevel’s end is far better than the life that awaited him. In fact, if Bevel had continued under his parents’ influence, his early faith would have been shattered–Bevel would have become another Mr. Paradise, a Christ-haunted agnostic scoffer, just like Bevel’s father. Through Bevel’s violent tragedy comes the Grace of Christ that led the boy to the river in the first place.
But grace comes to Mr. Paradise as well. He recognizes Bevel as the boy walked toward the river, so he follows him with a peppermint stick. This concern demonstrates Paradise’s compassion and charity–his love for his neighbor. He returns to his accustomed spot on the river, the spot of countless Christ-haunted meditations. From this very spot, the spot where he scoffed at the inefficacy of the River, he sees Bevel drowning. Without a second thought, he leaps into the water–into the river that is the River–to save the boy.
The boy enters the Kingdom. Mr. Paradise rises from the water “empty-handed” and stares downriver with “dull eyes” (174)–but he is once again in the river/River. And love for the boy brought him there. The dull eyes and empty hands communicate both Paradise’s inability to rescue Bevel, but also reveal his longing to follow after Bevel, to take the same journey.
Though we can’t be certain that Mr. Paradise will indeed respond properly to the Grace that has been given to him (as we couldn’t with the Misfit either), we do know that Grace has come. Mr. Paradise will become the messenger, the prophet, who will tell the story of Bevel’s journey to the Kingdom of Christ. This will be a message of salvation to Mrs. Connin–and a message of judgment to Bevel’s parents.
It will be a message of violence and grace–a message of salvation through suffering.
Resources: All page citations are from O’Connor’s Complete Stories.
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